Saturday, 25 July 2009

Potato wedges are much loved by the teens in my house, who will happily eat them every day, and thank goodness for that, because they (the wedges, not the teens) are so easy to make and packed full of energy and nourishment.

On my quest for the perfect wedge, fluffy on the inside, rustly and super- crunchy without, I have found that they do need to be parboiled first (read more on this subject).

But what a pain in the neck it is to wait for a pot of water to boil! So when I spotted a packet of sturdy, ziplocking microwave steaming bags in my supermarket, I decided to try a new method.

(If you don't hold with microwave ovens, for whatever reason - don't get me started on that subject! - feel free to parboil the wedges in the normal way, or, if plastic is your bugbear, use a lidded glass dish to microwave the spuds.)

For ultra-crunchiness, I tossed the wedges in channa (chickpea) flour and some mild aromatic spices. You can find chickpea flour in Indian supermarkets or spice shops. (If you're in a real hurry, and live in South Africa, use Pakco Chilli-Bite Mix in place of the spices and channa flour; that is what I used the first time I made these). Or use any herbs and spices of your choice.

These wedges stay crunchy for hours after they've come out of the oven, and don't turn leathery, as wedges that have not been parcooked tend to do. You do need a fan-assisted oven to achieve this level of crunch, it must be said. I've tried these in an oven without a fan, and they just weren't the same.

The dip, a variation on my Aunt Gilly's sublime red pepper sauce, has a mild, sweet smoky flavour that pairs beautifully with the spicy wedges. These are also nice with a creamy dip made of a third Hellman's mayonnaise and two-thirds thick Greek yoghurt, mixed together with a little crushed garlic and a generous squeeze of lemon juice.

Heat the oven to 190°C. Using the point of a sharp knife, cut a 1-cm slit in the side of each pepper, and push a whole clove of garlic into each pepper. Put the peppers directly on the hot oven racks (with a drip tray beneath) and roast for 35 to 40 minutes or so, or until they are very soft and the skin is blistered, but not charred. Place on a plate, cover with another plate, and allow to cool for 15 minutes. (Put the potato wedges in the oven in the meantime; see below). Pull off the stalks, peel away the skin, slice the peppers open and scrape out the seeds with the back of a knife. Put the now-softened whole garlic cloves and the flesh of the peppers into the goblet of a liquidiser or a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Add the olive oil and process to a smooth sauce. Add a squeeze of lemon juice - just enough to give the dip a little zing - season with salt and pepper, stir well and decant into a bowl.

Turn the oven up to 200°C and switch the fan on. Cut the potatoes into slim, even wedges (I use this wonderful potato-dividing device that produces even wedges in a jiffy). Put them into a sealable microwave cooking bag (or a glass dish). Add a single garlic clove, roughly sliced, and a good pinch of salt. Close the seal tightly (or cover with a lid). Microwave for 6-8 minutes, on high, or until the wedges are just tender on the outside. (Alternatively, cook them in rapidly boiling salted water for 6-7 minutes.) Allow to stand for a minute.

Pour the olive oil into the bag (or dish). Crush the three remaining garlic cloves directly into the bag, and add the cumin, curry powder, coriander, chilli flakes and channa flour.

Reseal the bag and toss its contents around gently so that every wedge is completely coated. Tip the wedges onto a baking sheet, making sure that they are skin-side down, and season with salt and pepper. Bake at 200°C, with the fan on, for 25-35 minutes (depending on your oven) or until they are very crisp and golden.

Wednesday, 22 July 2009

A bite of this heavenly, gingery tea-time treat transported me, in a twinkling, to my childhood. Isn't it curious how a long-forgotten scent or taste can summon dusty memories from the cobwebbiest corners of your brain?

And isn't it strange how a forgotten flavour or texture, when experienced again, can bring other ancient memories fizzing out of your brain banks? I must have been about ten or eleven when I last tasted my mum's ginger shortbread, but, 37 years down the line, a single bite on a biscuit evoked memories I had long forgotten: a beam of sunlight falling through a window, the paisley pattern on a tablecloth, the scent of dry highveld grass, the clink of a spoon against a teacup, the murmur of perfumed ladies and the tinkle of my grandma Peggy's laugh.

I don't know how often my mum made ginger shortbread when I was a child, but it was certainly often enough to imprint its particular perfume on my neural pathways.

I don't have a sweet tooth, and never eat cakes, biscuits, buns or puddings, but I was curious to try this old recipe, which I found in my mum's hand-written Seventies cookbook. The recipe is dead easy, very rich, very sweet and quite delicious. If you have a sour tooth, as I do, reduce the amount of sugar in the glaze, and add a good squeeze of lemon juice.

Preheat the oven to 180 C. Grease two small (15-20 cm diameter) cake tins. Put the softened butter and icing sugar in a large mixing bowl and, using an electric beater or a whisk, cream together until light and fluffy. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and ginger into the butter mixture and, using your fingertips, combine to form a ball of stiffish dough.

Divide the ball of dough between the two cake tins. Press the dough onto the base of the cake tins and pat smooth. Now, using your thumb, press a crimped pattern into the edges of the dough, so that the perimeter is slightly raised. Prick the dough all over with a fork. Place in the hot oven for 20-30 minutes, or until the shortbread turns golden brown.

While the shortbread is cooking, prepare the glaze. Put all the ingredients into a saucepan, and heat gently, stirring frequently. Do not allow the mixture to boil. (Or place in the microwave on a medium setting, for a minute, stirring once). Give the mixture a good whisk.

Remove the shortbread from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Tip the warm glaze over the shortbread and use a knife to spread it evenly up to the crimped sides. Allow to cool for 10 to 15 minutes and then, using a knife, mark each cake into 8-10 wedges.

When the shortcake is quite cold, remove it from the cake tins and cut, along the marks, into wedges.

Monday, 20 July 2009

I have always found hot mashed potato to be a superior cure for glumness, grouchiness and assorted aches of body and mind. Not any old gluey mash, mind you, but a fluffy, creamy pile of mashed fresh spuds, heaped in a volcano formation around a molten core of salty butter.

If I were on death row, perhaps for throttling an estate agent, or pushing a politician's face into the whirring blade of a food processor, I would not hesitate to choose mashed potato, pork bangers, peas and sticky onion gravy as my last meal. And if no pork sausages or peas were available, I would take the mash, straight up.

I don't often have the energy to peel a pile of spuds for real mash (my kids, annoyingly, seem to prefer crispy, healthy potato wedges) but I do find my thoughts turning to mashed potato when I am exhausted, hungry or fed up.

I'm also quite nuts about all the wonderful British traditional hashes of mashed potato. These dishes spring, in the main, from the thrifty use of leftover roast dinners, and although they have subtle regional differences, they draw from a common pool of ingredients: spuds, cabbage, onion, leeks, butter, chives, turnips, and, of course, butter. Ireland has colcannon and champ, England has bubble and squeak, and Scotland leads with three potato-based hashes: clapshot, stovies and rumbledethumps.

Rumbledethumps is, as far as I can ascertain, the only one of these flavoured hashes that is commonly (although not always) tipped into a dish, topped with cheese, and set in the oven to bake. It's a dish from the Scottish Borders, and usually features mashed potato, cabbage and onion, although I've found variations that include turnip. The delightful name of this dish (pronounced rumble-dee-thumps) is said to come from the bumpy burbling sound that the mixture makes as you turn it over in a hot pan. In my opinion, the name is more likely to be derived from gaseous, cabbagy pressure-leaks that make duvets float ceilingwards at night.

My version of rumbledethumps includes leeks, and I made it, rather prissily, in individual ramekins. Feel free to thump the whole mass into a big dish, and slap it in the centre of the table.

This dish can be made many hours - or even a day - in advance, and popped into the oven half an hour before serving.

Cut the peeled potatoes into quarters. Put them in a large, deep pan and add enough water just to cover them. Add the salt, place on the heat and bring rapidly to the boil. Boil for 20-30 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender, and fall apart, when poked with a sharp knife.

While the potatoes are boiling, prepare the leeks and cabbage. Heat a pan, add the butter and oil, and stir-fry the sliced leeks for a few minutes until they soften (but do not allow them to brown). Now add all the cabbage, toss well so that every shred is coated with fat, cover and allow to steam gently for 3-4 minutes, or until the cabbage has wilted. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside, leaving the lid on.

Drain the potatoes in a colander. Leave the hot plate on. Allow the spuds to drain and dry out for a minute or so. Return the spuds to their cooking pan and place over the heat. Add the milk and another generous knob of butter, wait for a moment for the milk and butter to bubble, and, using a potato masher, bash and mash the spuds to a smooth, fluffy consistency, adding more milk if necessary.

Now tip the leeks and cabbage into the mashed potatoes, and stir well to combine. Remove from the heat and tip in half the grated Cheddar and Parmesan. Stir again, and season with salt and pepper. Tip the mixture into a big, greased baking dish (or individual ramekins) and smooth the surface, using the side of a knife. Grate a little nutmeg - just a whisper - over the surface. Sprinkle with the remaining Cheddar and Parmesan, and place in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the cheese topping is bubbling and golden.

Friday, 17 July 2009

Why, you might ask, am I thinking about summer food in the crackly depths of the Johannesburg winter? Well, although it gets cold here at night, the afternoons are often gloriously warm and sunny, and the ineffable blue of a winter Highveld sky makes it difficult not to think of spring.

This light, summery roll of phyllo pastry and crunchy little vegetables in a lemony butter makes a lovely starter or lunch. You can prepare this in under 25 minutes, if you buy packs of pre-cut, crisp baby vegetables, and if you use spray-on olive oil (see my notes here), instead of melted butter, to glaze the phyllo sheets.

You can use any combination of quick-cooking, crisp baby vegetables for this recipe: I used two Woolworths packs of mixed vegetable pieces: baby corn, asparagus, green beans, carrot and butternut batons, courgettes and mangetout.

It is important not to overcook the veggies during the quick initial stir-fry, or they will lose their colour and crunch in the oven. Any fresh herb can be used to flavour the dressing, but I think that the combination of dill and lemon is sublime. I am a devoted fan of this most ethereal of herbs, and have discovered that you can freeze fresh dill for use during the dill-less winter months. See my note at the end of this post.

This parcel goes into a very hot oven so that the pastry crisps quickly, and the vegetables don't overcook: watch your parcel like a hawk as it bakes.

Preheat the oven to 210°C. Heat the butter and olive oil in a frying pan and add the carrot and the thyme sprigs. Cook over a fairly brisk heat, tossing often, for four minutes. Now add all the remaining baby vegetables, and stir-fry them for two minutes, until they are brightly coloured. Remove the pan from the heat and mix in the garlic, lemon juice and parsley. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside and allow to cool.

Cover a large chopping board or a baking sheet with a sheet of phyllo pastry. Brush all over with melted butter, or olive oil, or - the quick way - coat with spray-on olive oil. Add another sheet of pastry, and continue layering in this way until you've used all four sheets. Pile the cooked vegetables in a strip down the middle of the pastry, leaving a gap of an inch or so at either end of the pile. Arrange the cubed feta along the top and sides of the vegetables, and sprinkle with a little more olive oil and a squeeze of lemon juice. Pick up the long edge of the pastry closest to you and flip it over the vegetables. Brush with more fat, and then fold the other long side towards you, as if you are wrapping a present. Now fold the shorter sides of the pastry inwards (don't pleat them first) to make a neat parcel.

Place a greased baking sheet, face-down, on top of the parcel, hold it and the chopping board firmly, and flip the whole thing over so the pastry parcel lies smooth-side up on the baking sheet and the fold seams are on the bottom. Brush with more butter or oil and place in the hot oven for 10 to 15 minutes (depending on the ferocity of your oven) or until the phyllo pastry is crisp and just turning golden. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly.

While the parcel is cooking, make the dressing: put all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk until well combined. Place in the fridge.

Using a serrated knife, cut into thick slices and serve warm, with a big dollop of cool dill dressing.

Serves 4 as a light meal, or 6 as a starter.

Freezing dill: It is common wisdom that fresh dill is too fragile to freeze. Well, I beg to differ. You can freeze fresh dill, provided that you have a very cold and reliable freezer. Sure, it will darken and crisp, and it won't be suitable for salads or for garnishes, but it will retain its lovely, delicate aniseed flavour for up to two months in the freezer, and can be used in salad dressings, sauces and the like without losing any pungency. Some pointers: buy the dill in a plastic 'pillow pack' or box. Don't open or unwrap it, or rinse it: place the whole package into the freezer. If you're have bought a bunch of fresh dill, put it into a freezer bag and use a drinking straw to suck out any air. Seal tightly and freeze. When you take it out of the freezer, quickly remove however much you need and immediately crumble it directly into your sauce or dressing (it thaws in seconds).

Did you notice that the picture above has six layers of phyllo, not four? That's because I tore the parcel when I flipped it over, using two spatulas, and had to patch it with two more sheets. I don't recommend using six sheets: far too much pastry. But the filling tasted good!
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Wednesday, 15 July 2009

You have good blog days and bad ones, and today was a frabjous* one. I was tickled to be interviewed on Jenny Crwys-Williams's show today about this humble blog of mine, especially as it was featured alongside the new cookbooks of some of South Africa's most revered cookery writers: Lannice Snyman, Dora Sithole, Abigail Donnelly and my favourite, Phillipa Cheifitz.

And I was equally pleased to see my recipe for Moroccan-spiced Mini Meat-loaves featured on the blog My Easy Cooking, written by my new Net pal and clever cook Nina Timm. Nina has made this recipe look much nicer than on her blog than my original, so I have reproduced her photo here in the knowledge that she won't mind. Do pay a visit to Nina's blog, which - hardly surprising - has many devoted fans from all over the world.

There really are so many very talented food bloggers out there - take a look at the links on the left (scroll down a little), for a list of blogs by South African cooks and wine writers.

Thursday, 9 July 2009

If you were born in England in the first sixty years of the last century, you may get a tear in your eye when you hear the words 'steamed' and 'pudding'. On the other hand, if you were booted into a boarding school during your tender years, those two words may bring on spasms uncontrollable retching (but more of that later).

Sticky, lemon, ginger pud cloaked in custard.

My husband, born in the early Sixties in England, has lived in South Africa for almost 40 years, but is still hopelessly nostalgic about soft, cakey, syrupy steamed puddings, preferably cloaked in custard.

His soul - although thoroughly South African by now - continues to crave the gentle English comfort foods that he ate as a child, and, above all, he craves Proper Pudding. His late mother, Audrey Rayner, was an excellent and intuitive cook whose cooking style, though thoroughly and unashamedly English, had a lightness of touch and a finesse that completely abolishes any notions that traditional English food is stodgy, bland or boring. Audrey's almond tart is legendary in our family: try it for yourself.

This type of steamed pudding has a very long and interesting pedigree, and is a direct descendant of medieval and Elizabethan puddings. Containing shredded suet, meat, raisins, currants, spice and - later on - sugar, these mixtures were packed into sausage casings, stomach linings or linen, tied with string, and cooked in boiling water over an open range.

In her wonderful book Elinor Fettiplace's Receipt Book, Hilary Spurling remarks: 'The extraordinary thing about bag puddings is their longevity: they were hardly new inventions in 1604, and they retained a central position in English home cooking right up to the time of my mother and grandmother.'

Steamed and boiled puddings have made a modest showing over the past decade or so, as British celebrity chefs have plundered the past for inspiration, but they're still not mainstream enough to have made their way into the suburban kitchens of your average Jamie-and-Nigella-trained domestic cook. Perhaps this is because it seems like such a bother to have to steam a pudding (au contraire: it is astonishingly easy!). Maybe steamed puddings are just too old-fashioned (or inappropriate, if you live in a hot climate, as I do).

Or perhaps, as Hilary Spurling suggests, these puddings have lost favour because the associations with stodgy boarding-school food just run too deep: 'I suppose what finally did for them was the nauseating slatternly meanness of school and institutional food in wartime, and in the years of austerity that followed. People old enough to remember that time still have vivid memories of greasy, grey slabs of suet crust, slimy clothes and... congealed white fat on cold plates.'

Please don't be put off by this description: this pudding is so very good (and I speak as someone who never eats pudding, and only makes one if I'm trying to butter up my husband!).

I didn't have Audrey's original recipe for steamed ginger pudding, but I was determined to reproduce it, so I adapted a similar recipe (for 'Canary Pudding') from a book I think Audrey may have consulted: my own mum's first cookbook, Good Housekeeping's Picture Cookery, published in 1954. It took three tries for me to nail this recipe (the first attempt was too dry; the second too bland, and the third was Goldilocks-right, or so says my husband).

This pudding is best made in an old-fashioned glass pudding bowl of 1-litre capacity, but you can use a small, deep, square or circular ovenproof baking dish.

It's best served immediately, but you can make it in advance, set it aside, and steam it for another 20 minutes before you serve it.

Put a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan or stock pot on the heat, add five centimetres of water and bring to the boil. Butter a sturdy glass pudding bowl, or a thick-walled ceramic dish with a capacity of 1 litre. Cut a circle of tin foil or parchment paper big enough to cover the dish and overlap the edges by at least 7 centimetres, and set aside. Have some string ready.

Pour the syrup into the bottom of the buttered pudding bowl (you may need to warm the syrup first if it's a cold day) and add the chopped ginger pieces. Sprinkle with lemon juice, but do not stir. Set aside.

Put the softened butter and sugar into a new, large mixing bowl and beat vigorously, with an electric mixer, if you have one, until fluffy and well combined. Add the beaten egg, in small dollops, beating well between each dollop. Sift the cake flour, ginger, baking powder and salt into the butter/sugar mixture. Have a cup of of milk standing nearby. Starting at one side of the bowl, and using the electric beater or a whisk, gradually incorporate dry ingredients into the wet mixture, adding just enough milk (two to three tablespoons of milk is usually is enough) to achieve a soft, dropping consistency. Stir in the lemon zest.

Pour the batter gently into the buttered pudding bowl, taking care not to disturb the syrup. Cover with the circle of tin foil, pressing its overlapping edge down over the outside of the bowl. Wrap the piece of string around the bowl just below its lip (or top edge), and make a tight knot. Put the bowl into the big pan of boiling water: the water should reach half-way up the sides of the bowl. Cover the pan, and adjust the heat so that the water remains at a gentle rolling boil.

Cook for an hour and twenty minutes, checking the water level now and then. Remove the pudding bowl from the boiling water and run a sharp knife around the edges of the pudding to loosen it. Invert the pudding bowl onto a warmed platter and give it a good shake so that the pudding tips out cleanly.

Serve with extra syrup and warm custard or cold whipped cream or - what the heck - both.

Sunday, 5 July 2009

I was enchanted by the clever design of this ceramic salt-and-pepper set when I saw it in a hotel gift shop in the Drakensberg yesterday, and I bought it (a snip at only R55). Separately, the shakers look like bewildered little ghosts, but they fit together in a most tender embrace.

The owner of the gift shop told me it was made by a local potter from the nearby village of Clarens - she didn't give me the potter's name - and I came away feeling encouraged by the high standard of South African design. I was a bit miffed, then, to discover (while Googling for the name of the set's creator) that this design isn't original, and is a rip-off of Alberto Mantilla's 'Hug' salt and pepper shakers.

Is 'a rip-off' too strong a term? Perhaps, because it implies intellectual thievery on the part of the maker of my set. Would the words 'inspired by' or 'adapted from' be more suitable? After all, the two designs are not exactly the same; in fact, I think that my set, with its rough, clinking surface and neutral colour, is the better looking. Whoever made this set improved upon an existing design, and I am very happy to have these little darlings on my table.

I'm not going to go into the ins and outs and ethics of ripper-offery here, because I have better things to do than poke an angry bear with a hot stick.

What I can say is that this little salt-and-pepper set represents the way I feel about food writers (and in this category I include authors, bloggers and celeb chefs) who don't credit the source of their recipes. I don't mean to sound grouchy, but, honestly, there are very few good recipes that haven't already been invented. So, if you nick a recipe off someone, why don't you just say so? Do you honestly expect me to believe that you invented vichyssoise or sticky toffee pudding or saffron mash in your suburban kitchen last night? Those are random examples, okay, and maybe I'm being a bit picky, but I have reason to be. My point: there is no shame in giving credit where credit is due. Whether you found your recipe in your grandma's battered old cookbook, or you got it from a 1978 Annette Kesler recipe in Fair Lady, or you were 'inspired' by Jamie Oliver's latest cookbook, the least you can do is nod in the directon of these clever cooks.